Proposal Planners: If You’re Ready to Pop the Question

THE marriage game has no shortage of matchmakers, wedding planners, fashion stylists, floral designers and other referees.

Now joining their ranks is a group of consultants called proposal planners, who advise men, and sometimes women, who want to propose but are flummoxed about how to go about asking this life-altering question memorably.

In most cases, it is just four words. But saying them apparently is not always easy — or inexpensive.

For a fee, proposal planners promise to help plot a scenario for the key moment and assist in its execution, with just the right helicopter, hot-air balloon or gondola, and along with it the proper locale and musical accompaniment.

Sarah Pease, the owner of Brilliant Event Planning in New York, was focused solely on weddings and parties until 2008, when a friend proposed with an engagement ring at the bottom of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. She then became a proposal planner as well.

“I figured there must be a better way,” she said, quickly adding that the bucket ploy worked for that couple.

“They’re happily married,” she said, noting that she had always wanted to ask the woman if she rinsed the grease off the ring before putting it on.

Ms. Pease typically charges $500 for devising a plan; having her handle the whole operation can run $12,000, she said, plus any fees to those providing the transportation and site.

One of those who sought her out was Matthew Fowkes of Pittsburgh, who wanted to propose to Melissa Barnickel in New York, a city neither had ever visited.

Mr. Fowkes, 35, who runs an Internet site, hired Ms. Pease to devise a plan for a Dec. 2 proposal that would elicit a “yes” from Ms. Barnickel, 25, , a health-insurance business analyst who loves vintage chandeliers, flowers, music and all things French.

Photo

Matthew Fowkes and Melissa Barnickel.Credit
James Ambler/Pap the Question

Ms. Pease recommended Belleville, a Brooklyn bistro where Mr. Fowkes made his pitch — successfully — in a room decorated with a chandelier and a wrought-iron arch, as four singers did a rendition of “Marry Me,” by Train.

In addition to Ms. Pease’s $2,000 fee, Mr. Fowkes paid $5,000 for the vendors, including the rental of an elegant 1932 Hupmobile.

Was it worth it?

“I wanted her to have a fairy tale,” he said.

As for Ms. Barnickel? “I said: ‘Can we do it again when we come back to New York? Maybe for our anniversary?’ ”

For Michele Velazquez of Los Angeles, it was her boyfriend’s somewhat uninspired proposal in April 2010 that led her to open Heart Bandits there.

“He proposed to me on a sunset cruise,” she said. “He didn’t have a timeline, so he proposed to me as the ship was docking, and for after, he didn’t have a plan for how we should celebrate. We just went home.”

Nevertheless, last August she married Marvin Velazquez, who is also her partner in the business. They charge $99 for an idea and $500 and up for executing it.

One client, Isaac Hanna, 32, came to them looking to create an outdoor scenario to propose to Christine Youssef: on a helicopter ride, at a picnic in a park or in a hot-air balloon. But the weather forecast for Nov. 12, the date he had chosen, called for rain.

So Ms. Velazquez persuaded Mr. Hanna, a bakery-goods distributor in Corona, Calif., to woo Ms. Youssef, a 29-year-old loan officer, on the covered patio of Paisano Ristorante Italiano in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., where the couple encountered a guitarist who asked for a request and then played their favorite song, “Better Together,” by Jack Johnson.

When Mr. Hanna took out a ring, a photographer was ready. (Ms. Youssef said “yes.”) The cost: $500 to Heart Bandits, $250 to the photographer and $150 to the guitarist.

While brides tend to exercise control over weddings, the marriage proposal is “the one thing the guy has control over,” said Michael A. Bloomberg, who in 2005 established An Exclusive Engagement in Fort Worth.

“They have one shot to do it right,” but they’re heading into the unknown, “like sky diving,” said Mr. Bloomberg, who charges $100 an hour and up to $2,400 for helping arrange the crucial moment.

Proposal planners may promise that no detail will go unattended, but they readily admit there is one over which they have no control: the target of all this attention may still say “no.”

A version of this article appears in print on December 25, 2011, on page ST10 of the New York edition with the headline: If You Need Some Help With Those Four Little Words. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe